Lower-level appointments loom as big hurdle for Bush

Getting political appointees in place not only in the Cabinet but at lower levels in agencies looms as the biggest hindrance to a successful transition for President-elect Bush, panelists said Tuesday during a forum at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "The presidential appointment process is broken and it needs fixing," said panelist Jack Watson, who served as chief of staff for President Carter and headed his transition team. "We don't need full field investigations on everybody the President appoints." Other panelists gathered for the forum, "Assessing the Bush Transition," included Norman Ornstein, an AEI resident scholar, Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Alvin Felzenberg, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, C. Boyden Gray, an attorney who served as director of the Office of Transition Counsel and as White House counsel for President Bush, and Thomas McLarty, chairman of McLarty Companies, who served as chief of staff and special envoy for the Americas under President Clinton. The Bush transition has been unique because so many of his appointees have previously gone through the nomination process. Bush and his team "designated people who by large have been around the track more than once…which helped them do it quickly," Gray said. "That's not so easy with second- or third-tier people who are coming in to government for the first time." Gray pointed out that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., husband of Labor Secretary nominee Elaine Chao, is "filling out more forms as the spouse [of a nominee] than he ever had to fill out as a Senator." McConnell is serving his third Senate term. In the adminstrations of the senior George Bush and President Clinton, it took approximately nine months to get Senate-confirmed appointees in place, Felzenberg noted. A significant portion of each President's term was over before his team was in place. With the recent election delay, seating the new Bush team could take more than one year. "No company board of directors or CEO would wait nine months to put a team in place," McLarty said. The problem is compounded by a law passed in 1998 that prevents nominees from serving as acting head of an agency or department, Gray said. The appointee process needs to be revamped today, Watson said. "President-elect Bush should send the highest level of leaders to talk with Congress about how we can get it done now, not in the future, but now," Watson continued. "It can be done in a fair way."